What Would You Do If You Knew You Couldn't Fail?

Today’s ACIM lesson, #318, In me salvation’s means and end are one, is another step closer to accepting the Atonement. While rereading Marianne Williamson’s A Return to Love, I came across this quote and it occurred to me to look at “salvation” is a different way. “Taking responsibility for our lives, then , means taking responsibility for our thoughts. And praying to God to ‘save’ our lives means praying for Him to save us from our own negative thoughts.” Atonement then becomes the acceptance of our holiness, of embracing all of who and what we are and are meant to be without the idolatry. “Salvation’s means and ends are one” is a step away from duality and towards unity. Saving the world is done one holy instant at a time, each time love is chosen over fear.

From last year’s writing:

Means and Ends

I accept the Atonement for myself. We are all one. One breath of humanity. One breath of love. One world. One life. One. Today, as the majority of the words falling from my lips are expressions of gratitude, I embrace that oneness because I know all minds are connected and only the love is real and that those who are steeped in fear and hatred and greed are not disconnected but merely lost a little while; merely oblivious to the truth of who and what they are. Today, I accept the Atonement for myself because I have my husband back (though they continue to search for what went wrong), and I am beyond grateful for that. This Thanksgiving week, my heart is brimming with thankfulness for each moment, each breath, each individual, and every expression. I am connected to all and to God.

In me, God’s holy Son, are reconciled all parts of Heaven’s plan to save the world. What could conflict, when all the parts have but one purpose and one aim? How could there be a single part that stands alone, or one of more or less importance than the rest? I am the means by which God’s Son is saved, because salvation’s purpose is to find the sinlessness that God has placed in me. I was created as the thing I seek. I am the goal the world is searching for. I am God’s Son, His one eternal Love. I am salvation’s means and end as well.

Let me today, my Father, take the role You offer me in Your request that I accept Atonement for myself. For thus does what is thereby reconciled in me become as surely reconciled to You.

Salvation’s means and ends are one means that it is up to me to do the part God gave me. It’s up to me to listen and accept and take the role God offers me. Of course, ego wants to object as if the gifts of God were somehow not good enough, but God wants only my happiness . Means and ends are one because the changeless, the real, is always the same: love.

How I love being in the arms of love! How I love connecting to all, knowing that it is all Spirit, all Love, and beyond that, knowing that anything that appears to be otherwise is illusion.